Switching to Windows Phone for 30 days (then switching back to iOS after that)

I admit it – I’m a technology nerd who loves playing with the latest and greatest. But often that’s really all it is – playing. I’ll mess with something for a few hours, make a snap judgement, and move on.

Recently I started to wonder why I’m so quick to judge products. They all have nuances and subtleties. They all have real, dedicated, smart people behind them. There’s no way I can truly understand all of that in three hours.

On top of that, it’s kind of a waste of time. Spending a couple hours here and there without learning anything meaningful (or finding a great product) is a bummer.

So I’m trying something new. I’m going to experiment with fewer products for longer stretches of time. When I pick up some new tech, I’m going to live with it, all-in, for 30 days. I’ll completely switch from an existing product to a new one.

I’ll consider a variety of switch-related questions. Why am I dissatisfied with a current product? What’s exciting or interesting about the new product? How hard or easy was it to switch? And ultimately, was it good enough to keep me?

First up…

Windows Phone vs. iOS

I switched my Verizon service to a Nokia Lumia 928 for 30 days. I took all my calls on it, took pictures of my kids, logged into all my accounts, downloaded a bunch of apps, used Skydrive instead of Dropbox, and put my iPhone on the shelf.

It was eye-opening – Windows Phone is really good and deserves a look from everyone. In many ways it tops iOS with:

A dedicated camera button (especially handy if you have kids). Pressing and holding a dedicated button to launch the camera, then half-pressing it to focus the shutter is really great. And the photos themselves looked great too.

Great Skydrive integration. Any photos or videos you take are automatically uploaded via wifi as full resolution files. Dropbox on iOS does something similar when your location changes, but Skydrive worked better for me.

Apps that work together instead of being sandboxed. Open the music app, and you’ll see your last played songs from Spotify and Pandora. Open the camera app, and a variety of lenses and filters are available to you. Context to what you want to do (listen to music, for example) is given priority over specific apps.

And yet all that said, iOS still won out. Nitpicks and all, iOS has become extraordinarily mature over the last 6 years. It has a huge universe of great apps, incredibly useful services like iMessage and Airplay, and perfect hardware integration. So I didn’t end up switching, but I learned a ton about what Apple could be doing better.

A few others in the hopper…

Picturelife vs. Aperture/iCloud

Picturelife is a secure, online vault for all your photos. It syncs up a bunch of sources (Aperture, iPhoto, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) so you have a wonderfully consolidated view of all your photos that’s always accessible. Ever want to see a picture from 2001? It’s there. I’m about a week into it, and it looks really promising – especially because it’s so easy to find embarrassing old pictures of friends and family!

Twitter’s official client vs. Tweetbot

I’m a loyal Tweetbot user on both Mac and iOS. But the official Twitter clients are interesting – they’re clear, simple, and fast. They’re not as featured-packed as Tweetbot, but maybe that’s a good thing. They display ads, but maybe the new conversation view is worth it. This experiment starts today, so we’ll see.

Misfit Shine vs. Fitbit Zip

To be fair, circumstances forced this switch – I lost my Fitbit! But that’s a valid reason to consider a switch. If I was perfectly satisfied, I could have simply bought another Fitbit. The Misfit Shine started off as Kickstarter project to make a better wireless activity tracker, and it’s elegant and simple. That’s proven to be both good and bad early on. We’ll see how it goes for the next 30 days.

So these are just a few examples, but the idea is the same throughout – for me to really learn the good, bad, and ugly of a product, I have to spend a lot of time with it. Best case, I’ll find a really great product. Worst case, I’ll have learned a lot – and that’s time well spent.

L4rry

on 13 Sep 13

Funny – I feel the same way about music tech and producing: I buy flashy new synth & effect “things” (my computer is my hub for all things sonic) but resort to my snap judgements before I can truly understand their value to my sound. I’ve forced myself to spend more time learning features and basics before I consider what sounds to make. I’ll admit that it can be very tempting and easy for me to right things off initially, only to discover that someone was using something in a way that was foreign to my workflow and that forced my reconsideration. Of course for every one of “those”, there are 10 crappy others I have to muddle through first. Glad I’m not the only one. Cheers!

Chris

on 13 Sep 13

I bought the Nokia Lumia 920 because I felt like something new and thought Microsoft/Nokia were doing some interesting things. I’m actually glad that they acquired Nokia as I feel Nokia Maps were amazing. There were some nice things about the Windows Phone that I eventually became bored with, though. I wound up swapping the SIM to my old iPhone and I’ve been happier since. iCloud, iMessage, and iTunes are things you really miss. The biggest thing I was annoyed with was hardware - specifically Windows Phone is buggy and the battery life was awful and inconsistent. I feel that some software issues would destroy the battery too - it would get hot for no reason. iPhone sets the expectations high. So, I’m gonna stick to iPhone not solely because of iOS but because of battery life, commonality of iPhone chargers from friends, and it’s very stable OS. It’s the best all around phone for me. I’d love to checkout Android as well, but feel the hardware on those have the same issues.

Des

on 13 Sep 13

I went the Lumia route about 10 months ago after having an iPhone forever, and for me it won hands down. The way apps work together is what sold it to me and because I use Mac and Windows computers I had no trouble with hardware integration. As for it being buggy as Chris said, I haven’t had any issues (as opposed to the iPhone which I had to restart all the time) and the battery in my 920 is great, I often get almost 2 days usage from a single charge. Do I miss iMessage? No, my friends used to group spam me so I disabled it anyway. iCloud? No, I feel that Skydrive is just as good and having MS Office in your pocket is killer. iTunes? Hell no, I’m glad to get rid of that buggy piece of software for good, and the XBox music subscriptions are fantastic. I can see why Apple’s finally getting on board with this too.

One thing I do find funny though, the new iPhone 5C, well it looks like a Nokia Lumia 620 :)

Tin Kadoic

on 16 Sep 13

Let us know about Flex vs. Shine, I’m really interested in what you have to say.

Dan

on 16 Sep 13

@Tin – I actually had Fitbit Zip (not a Flex). So it’s not an exact comparison, but the idea is the same.

Chanse Arrington

on 18 Sep 13

Would love to see a Basecamp app for Windows Phone and Windows 8. I use Basecamp for all my projects and really really really wish I had push notifications and full basecamp support on my devices to speed up the work process.